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The amounts of fantasy players who are participating in Head-to-Head leagues continues to grow, while Rotisserie scoring remains the most enduring and traditional way to play.
While the roots of Fantasy Baseball are in the Rotisserie Game, the popularity of Head-to-Head leagues in other sports, especially football, has led to many fantasy types gravitating to similar types of formats in baseball. No matter whether you are a longtime or newer fantasy player, there are two distinctive and challenging ways to play.
Head-to-Head Fantasy Baseball has indeed been with us for a while, as I can recall participating in my very first H2H leagues at SportsLine USA (later to become CBS SportsLine) in the mid-1990s. The rush of checking for wins and losses and watching the earliest versions of live scoring offered a unique and highly compelling alternative to the Roto game.
The H2H game is appealing to many for its quicker return on results and wins and losses format. Roto leagues deliver a fully satisfying reward for hard work over a full season.
In either type of format, finding the truly ideal set of rankings for your specific league purposes can be a daunting task. Many H2H points leagues vary in their scoring setups and some Roto Leagues expand their scoring categories beyond the usual 5 x 5 setup.
The time is long past due for you to have rankings that address your league’s specific points leagues scoring setups. The wait is now over. The RotoBaller Custom Rankings Service for Head-to-Head Points and Roto Leagues is here. A RotoBaller MLB premium subscription is required to use this service.
Custom Category League Rankings
It’s a simple process for the user, and our experts do all the important work to provide a comprehensive set of rankings that are designed to meet your exact league specifications. You don’t have to rely on generalized cheat sheets or rankings that do not meet your exact league settings anymore.
The RotoBaller team sends your custom rankings to your inbox within 48 hours of the staff receiving your request for ranks built exactly for your own league parameters. Think of it as having a high-end baseball glove or bat designed for you by the very best manufacturers with input from top Major League Baseball players to suit their needs.
This service is free for RotoBaller Premium Season Pass subscribers (enter promo code KING at checkout for an additional discount).
RotoBaller's experts construct your Custom Head to Head League Rankings much in the same meticulous manner that a pro-style baseball glove may be designed with insights from Major Leaguers on what they want. (Photo Credit: the-daffodil).
The easy part is getting your league information to our experts, who will then review all the parameters in detail before getting started on the assembly process. You just have to fill out a simple questionnaire that asks you to include weighted values for all of the key statistical categories in your league and enter notes on any additional categorical items that may be needed to calculate your ranks.
Review and submit your request, and then the RotoBaller team immediately works on constructing the perfect set of rankings for your draft.
The Process: The RotoBaller Team Goes to Work For You
It really doesn't get easier than this:
- Step 1: Fill out our questionnaire in 1 minute with your league settings
- Step 2: Get ready for the response as the RotoBaller team gets to work.
- Step 3: Receive your own custom Head to Head or Roto rankings
Behind the scenes, we work our magic. We use #1 accuracy ranker Ariel Cohen’s Average Total Cost (ATC) projections, and based on the settings entered, our experts calculate the total projected points for all players, the replacement levels at each position, and the projected PAR (Points Above Replacement) for every player.
Using a z-score based methodology, the PAR is converted to dollar values. And “presto”! The points, dollar values, scoring rates, and other factors are then ported into a final, perfectly customized set of rankings for your leagues and jettisoned to your inbox.
Behind the Scenes: The Making of Your Custom Rankings
Let’s take you inside the RotoBaller Custom Rankings Factory so you see some of what goes into the actual, thorough process of creating a set of rankings just for you. As we have indicated, your requested settings are blended with our very best RotoBaller projections, such as Ariel Cohen’s projections.
From Ariel himself, here is a primer on the ATC Projections that serve as a basis for your generated custom rankings.
“The Average Total Cost projection system (ATC) gets its name from the fact that it “averages” many other projection systems together. ATC also happens to be my initials. However, ATC goes a step further than purely applying a simple average. Rather, ATC assigns different weights to different underlying projection models based on the careful study of historical performance. ATC is a “smart” aggregation model.”
“The methodology behind ATC is similar to what Nate Silver does with his presidential election forecasting at www.fivethirtyeight.com. Nate collects lots of polling data. He assigns credibility weights to each firm in order to know how to combine them."
"ATC calculates different weights for each statistic that it projects. System A might receive 15% of the weight for batter home runs, but only 5% for pitcher strikeouts. System B may receive 10% for HR, but 20% for K, etc. The ATC system incorporates many freely available projections, plus prior MLB statistics over the past three seasons.”
The z-scores turn a player's scored stats into an all-encompassing metric. First, a different z-score is calculated for each category, by comparing a player's projected stat to the average stat, using the standard deviation of the statistic. The higher a player’s z-score is in a category, the higher above average he is in that specific category.
For my specific league, I requested a set of rankings based on the FanTrax Head-to-Head Points scoring system in a proposed 12-team format.
Ultimately, Aaron Judge was projected to score 626 points by the RotoBaller team of rankings designers, and Jose Ramirez was the only other player projected to score over 600 points. But how we get from raw points to dollar values is by first turning them into Points Above Replacement (PAR). In some ways, calculating dollar values for point leagues is like doing the same for a one-category roto league, as PAR is analogous to a player's total z-score (which is the sum of their individual z-scores for each category) and is determined by adjusting each player's raw point total according to how many points the average "replacement player" (your best options for a hypothetical replacement from your bench/the waiver wire.
Aaron Judge might be projected to score more points but Jose Ramirez edges him out in dollar values because the non-starter options at third base are going to be worse than in the outfield. And gaps like this increase even more when looking at a position like second base that is way deeper than either third base or outfield. Remember, you're not just wanting the highest point scorers - you want to get the best balance of options that will actually be available to you in a draft.
Our custom rankings service does this hard work for you, projecting points scored while also using adjusted dollar values to put all players on a level playing field, regardless of position. This allows you to judge which positions in your league need to be attacked and where you might be better served by waiting.
Here is a portion of the final output that was delivered to my inbox:
Using the above examples, it's easy to see how pitchers stack up to hitters, especially those at the more shallow positions. We saw earlier that third base isn't as deep as the outfield but compared to pitchers, the outfield won't be nearly as deep. Keep in mind that this is for a league on Fantrax, with five (5) outfielders being used, compared to ESPN, CBS, and Yahoo which all have three (3) outfielder slots. This is huge because it's the difference between 60 outfielders being needed as starters on (not counting the UT slot) compared to 36 on the other platforms. To put faces to those numbers, that's Hunter Renfroe being the "worst" outfielder started in a (3) OF setup, or Trent Grisham in a (5) OF system. With your custom ranks, you'll quickly know which players (and at which positions) are going to be the most valuable in your particular league.
Arrival Day
Once the process of generating and meticulously reviewing your rankings is complete, your Custom package is delivered quickly and directly to your e-mail address. As a Rotoballer Season Pass subscriber, you are then ready for draft day with your very own personalized, deluxe suite of rankings.
Get ready to execute the ultimate draft day plan, as you will be like a superstar with a customized bat and glove strutting onto the virtual diamond.
Get your personalized set of Custom Rankings right here! You can sign up for the RotoBaller Fantasy Baseball Season Pass here, using promo code KING at checkout for an additional discount.
Nicklaus Gaut contributed to this story. Scott Engel's fantasy and betting analysis is also featured at The Game Day.
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